


i want your love and i want your revenge

by tunemyart



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, another post-Kindred Spirits fic?, why yes!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunemyart/pseuds/tunemyart
Summary: After Gabrielle has the absolute gall to say that a good lover is 'gentle and kind', Xena helpfully tries to accommodate. Set post 5x17, "Kindred Spirits", and brought to you entirely by that exchange in the bathhouse.
Relationships: Gabrielle/Xena
Comments: 20
Kudos: 141





	i want your love and i want your revenge

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this is kind of the thematic (and also quarantine-induced!) sister of my fic "Wifely Duties" for... many reasons. Anyway here's more sexytimes and X/G being dumb and in love!

The thing about being with Xena was that no part of Gabrielle’s life was ever dull for very long. This was after all the bet she’d made with life from the moment she’d caught Xena’s eyes in the middle of a fight and glimpsed, just for a moment, the wild storm that lived inside her. 

_That,_ she’d thought, painfully adolescent and naive, _I want that,_ without any real idea of all the ways that was true. 

Now, Gabrielle was willing to admit that as a young girl she might have had unrealistic expectations for what that wildness would mean in her own life. She was even willing to admit that the romance that had knocked her off her unsuspecting feet might have further exaggerated those already absurdly romantic expectations. But all the same, it was hard to stop the creeping disappointment that she might actually have to make those admissions after half a decade and more.

“Y’okay?” Xena mumbled sleepily from where she had molded herself lazily against Gabrielle’s back. 

And Gabrielle was okay. She was fine - great, even. Her body was still humming quietly with the aftermath of their lovemaking, which certainly wasn’t cause for complaint. 

And after all, how could any of her present situation be cause for complaint? Not Xena, smoothing a tender, unconscious hand up and down her ribcage in a gesture Gabrielle had always loved. Not Eve, safe and sound and sleeping a few feet away. Not the way they were connected, the three of them, a family, in a more incontrovertibly permanent way than she and Xena had been even before Eve’s arrival. 

What was there to miss that was more than what she had, right here and right now? The exhausted strain of exertion in her calves and thighs? The soreness between her legs? The sweat that had melded her skin with Xena’s in the delirious aftermath? Xena’s hands drifting to cup her breasts and tweak her nipples, craning her head to nip at Gabrielle’s neck in a slow, torturous working of Gabrielle up for more, more, always more? 

Gabrielle bit her lip. Well…

“Gabrielle?” 

But Xena’s body was as attuned to hers as ever, and her voice was already sounding more alert. Hastily, Gabrielle covered the hand nestled between her breasts with her own, smoothing it with her thumb until the new tension that had risen in Xena’s body drained away, leaving her soft and drowsy against Gabrielle’s back.

“I’m fine,” she soothed, and she _was._

“Sure?” 

“Mm-hmm. Go to sleep.” 

She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, Gabrielle knew, and that was on top of the stress of the changes in her body and of adjusting to the rigors of motherhood and the constant danger of the gods’ wrath against their small family. Even their week with the Amazons hadn’t been what Gabrielle would describe as _relaxing,_ although she knew better than most that the words ‘Xena’ and ‘relax’ didn’t really belong together in the same sentence - let alone the same span of time. If she was actually drifting off on her own, Gabrielle should probably encourage it. Gabrielle should revel, even, in the fact that hers was probably the only voice in the world that could lead Xena into slumber.

Still - Gabrielle couldn’t quite help her frown either when Xena started snoring into her shoulder a moment later. 

* * *

Maybe it was a postpartum thing, she considered the next day. Xena wouldn’t be the first woman to want sex less after having a baby - or so Gabrielle had heard, anyway. Xena had certainly swung through enough moods about it while she’d been pregnant. 

Maybe, as she’d considered last night, it was simply due to the stress of their lives and her own exhaustion. Her recovery from pregnancy and labor had been long, probably compounded by everything else; and while Xena had worried over Eve’s colic and coughs, Gabrielle had worried over Xena’s prolonged fatigue and blood-soaked undergarments despite Xena’s exhausted reassurances that it was all normal, she’d been through this before, remember? 

_Yes,_ Gabrielle had snapped back more than once, _but you’re not nineteen and invincible anymore, Xena._

Or maybe - although this would be worst of all - some of the energy that had always sparked sharp and hot between them, even when Gabrielle had been too inexperienced to know it for what it was, had simply mellowed with time. Gabrielle had heard of this happening too, although she’d somewhat egotistically thought herself exempt from something so prosaic. 

“Uh, Xena?” she said a few days later while Xena’s lips were leaving pleasant - but barely-there - kisses on the inside of her thigh. 

Xena looked up with a hum, letting the tip of her tongue dart out across sensitive skin and successfully distracting Gabrielle for a moment. 

Gabrielle forged ahead once she’d recovered. “You know I’m not gonna break, right?”

“Sure I know,” Xena said easily. “Something on your mind?” 

Oh boy. On second thought, Gabrielle probably should have planned this one out around Xena’s ego and her own distractability. “You just… seem to be playing things very safe lately, and I’m not entirely sure where that’s coming from.” 

“Oh,” Xena said, and the _'i_ _s that all?’_ was implied in her tone. “I’m just trying to be accommodating.”

“Accommodating,” Gabrielle repeated dubiously. 

“Yeah, you know,” Xena said. “Since you like things to be so _gentle_ and _kind._ ”

Those two words were clearly supposed to be significant to Gabrielle - significant in a way that was outside of the space and assumptions under which she was currently operating. She raised her head to get a better look at Xena’s face. There was no wounded ego, no affront to her pride or her feelings hidden in her expression, but there in the corner of her mouth, Gabrielle did detect - was that a _smirk?_

_Gentle and kind,_ she’d said. _Gentle and kind -_

And finally, the pieces snapped into place.

“Are you _joking,_ ” Gabrielle demanded. 

The smirk was full-fledged now, Xena crowing at Gabrielle finally realizing the joke. “I was just trying to please,” she said, all faux innocence. “Or was that not what you wanted after all? Because I gotta say, communication - "

But Gabrielle had shot straight past _simmering_ and right into _boiling,_ and she channeled her fury into a full body tackle and a kiss, all teeth and leverage and demanding hands forcing Xena’s laughing mouth up to hers. 

“I’m sensing some pent up feelings,” Xena got out when Gabrielle let up enough to breathe furiously against her mouth. “Do I - "

“Shut up,” Gabrielle told her, and kissed her again. Xena’s unbearable smugness still managed to come through in the way she combined a laugh with a sensuous moan around Gabrielle’s tongue, apparently impervious to Gabrielle’s attempted conquest of her body as she cheerfully let Gabrielle press her deeper into the blankets, held down at the wrists by Gabrielle’s strong grip and at one leg by Gabrielle’s lower body weight. 

“I cannot _believe_ you sometimes,” she grumbled as she ground down on Xena’s thigh, the control of her own pleasure mingling with her frustration while Xena watched with a curious sort of anticipation. It was nowhere near how Gabrielle wanted her, and she tried to remedy that by taking one of Xena’s breasts in her mouth and sucking hard and without warning. It earned her a squirm and a gasp, which was better, but not good enough. 

“I find that hard to believe,” Xena replied breathlessly. “If there’s an expert, you’re pretty much it.” 

Gabrielle’s glare must have held enough of an edge to make Xena think better of trying to trade jokes, because the next thing she knew she was flat on her back while Xena loomed coyly over her. 

“Better?” Xena asked with a slow grind of her own against Gabrielle’s abdomen, which tightened at being made the platform for the slick, intimate tease. 

Gabrielle nearly howled in frustration, every part of her singing and thrumming with anticipation, pushed well past the point of teasing by the last two weeks. She felt half-wild, determined to wipe that smirk off her face in a way that still left her eyes burning with the intensity Gabrielle had _missed_ , in a way that would burn Gabrielle up under them before they were through. 

“Oh,” Xena said and tutted to herself, all wide innocent eyes and absolute control. “You still seem awfully tense, Gabrielle. Was there something you wanted?” 

“Xena,” Gabrielle groaned, perilously close to begging.

Xena hummed and leaned down to kiss her neck very lightly, very gently. “No, then?” she asked innocently, her firm nipples dragging across Gabrielle’s chest and hinting at the luscious, phantom weight of the full breasts above. “I know how very… _gentle…_ you like it,” she said, with a whisper of her tongue over the sensitive skin under Gabrielle’s ear. “I’m glad you told me or I wouldn’t have known. After all these years, too. Imagine that, huh?”

“ _By the gods,_ ” Gabrielle nearly shouted, the last fine thread of her patience ready to snap. “Will you just get over it and fuck me?” 

Those seemed to be the magic words. Xena’s eyes darkened enough that Gabrielle knew she’d finally, _finally_ won. Xena kissed her but this time with the seductive intention Gabrielle had been craving, her tongue sliding against Gabrielle’s as her fingers slid home and began to thrust. 

Gabrielle felt lightheaded with the lack of air and the sudden onslaught. It was all she could do to spread herself shamelessly further, wrap her legs around Xena, and hold on. Her orgasm lifted her up and sent her crashing back down in what seemed like no time at all, though Gabrielle really, really wasn’t complaining. 

Xena was already rearranging her legs, though, draping them over her own broad shoulders, rising up, and licking her way up Gabrielle’s center before Gabrielle had entirely grasped what was happening. Her mind was buzzing, unable to filter sensation from sensation yet wholly focused on each stroke of Xena’s tongue against her, relentless, consuming. Gabrielle made restless, useless fists in the furs beneath her and envisioned her orgasm being drawn out of her under the incredible ministrations of Xena’s mouth, the downward, knowing delve and return of her fingers coaxing it upwards even as the blood rushed down to her head and made it pound with every frantic beat of her heart until, finally, it consumed her whole. 

Her head was fuzzy in the aftermath, only vaguely able to register sharp nips up her torso, a belated tweak of her nipples followed by the close and suction of blessedly warm lips, a rough thumb at her lips preceding that same mouth descending and taking, taking, taking. Gabrielle gave into it willingly, letting her own hands bury their way into Xena’s hair, relishing the involuntary hitch of their breaths between their mouths and faces, the controlling slide of Xena’s hand against her jaw smearing her own wetness over her skin.

Foolishly, Gabrielle almost wanted to weep with how good it was; and when Xena lifted up enough to that the focus on her blue, blue gaze pinned and nearly pierced her through, the combination of it and her heady, stupid relief actually did make her tear up a little. 

And of course, that was enough to make the focus behind Xena’s eyes shift, and for Xena herself to break and soften into concern. 

“Hey,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Gabrielle groaned internally and kicked herself. “Nothing,” she assured Xena. 

But Xena was thumbing away the moisture from the corner of her eye. “Sure looks like something.” 

Gabrielle wasn’t interested in having this conversation right now, if ever, and tugged her back to her mouth. “Just c’mere,” she said against her lips.

It thankfully didn’t take much work to convince Xena to get back to where she was before, and when Xena murmured, “Turn over,” her breath in her ear making her shiver, she complied readily. 

Xena knew exactly how careful she needed to be, reading the ways she could push Gabrielle through her fingers and skin, and walked the line between grace and abandon with familiar, negligent ease.

“Was this what you wanted?” Xena murmured to her, face pressed into her neck, breasts pressed into her shoulder blades, dark hair spilled across Gabrielle’s back and over her shoulder, three fingers deep and twisting. 

Unbidden, Gabrielle had an image of her in battle: grace in motion, restrained abandon, a living contradiction bound up in mortal flesh and deceptive power. She moaned out an affirmative that Xena echoed as if she’d just been waiting to give Gabrielle back the sound, refracted in the sex-deepened husk of her familiar voice; and it twisted in Gabrielle’s core along with her fingers. 

It was in fact exactly what Gabrielle had wanted. She wanted all of Xena: her passion, her strength, her force, her beauty, her anger and rage, her vulnerability and despair - and yes, her kindness and her gentleness. The latter two always underlay the way she touched Gabrielle, and were as important to Gabrielle as anything else that happened between them; but Gabrielle didn’t know if she could ever communicate any of this to Xena in a way she would understand or accept. 

_I want everything you are,_ she wanted to say. _I want every way you are._

Xena took her time and Gabrielle blissfully followed her lead until, with a bite to Gabrielle’s neck that was immediately soothed with a languorous lave of her tongue, Gabrielle’s body took it at last as tacit permission to come. 

Xena was still staring at her intently when Gabrielle opened her eyes and refocused, and absurdly, it was enough to make her blush. Xena’s lips quirked when she spotted it and dragged the backs of her knuckles fondly across her cheek in acknowledgement. 

“No tears this time?” she asked. 

Gabrielle laughed and leaned forward to kiss her. “No,” she agreed. 

“You gonna tell me what that was about?” 

Gabrielle would really prefer not to. It was wonderful to see Xena in good enough spirits that she had the desire and energy to play the elaborate kind of jokes that Gabrielle had suffered, and done her best to turn back around on her, in easier days. The fact that those days had been heady with the start of their romance and exploration of each other seemed to be simple coincidence: Gabrielle felt every bit as new and loved and in love as she had then. 

“I just… felt really good,” she settled on saying; which Xena, at length, seemed to accept.

“Well,” Xena said, nipping the fingertips that Gabrielle had been tracing lightly over her lips, “I’m glad. I guess you deserve it after a week of _‘kind and gentle’_.”

“You guess?” Gabrielle said, scoffing, her righteous indignation coming back to her all over again with those words. “No, Xena, I think you’ll be making that one up to me for a while.” 

Xena laughed, but her eyes were warm and she made a noise that wasn’t agreement or disagreement, but was so genuinely full of pleasure that Gabrielle, tender but still aroused, clenched around nothing. 

“Mmm,” Xena said again, crawling over Gabrielle’s body without breaking her stare. Gabrielle felt breathless and new to the intimacy of her naked scrutiny all over again. “It worked, though.” 

“What? Your plan to drive me insane?” Gabrielle asked with a half-hearted huff, gasping as Xena’s fingers skimmed through her folds lightly again, just for a moment. “Because yeah, that worked.” 

“Well, yeah, that too,” Xena admitted with a small smile, as much as an apology as Gabrielle knew she’d receive. “But no. You’ve just been so worried lately.”

“There’s been a lot to be worried about,” Gabrielle said with a raised eyebrow. 

“Well, sure,” Xena acknowledged. “But all the same, being with the Amazons was good for you. Good for us, even, in its own way. I’ve missed being like this with you.” 

Gabrielle narrowed her eyes. “If you’re trying to claim that this was all my own fault - “

Xena finally ducked down and cut her off with another slow kiss that Gabrielle was quickly lost in. 

“No,” Xena said when she pulled away. “Just that I got lucky enough to have someone worry about me so much. That’s all.” 

“Hmm,” Gabrielle said, not quite ready to be pacified just yet. “And what - this was all part of your long plan to get me to stop worrying?” 

Xena grinned, and instantly looked so much younger that Gabrielle couldn’t help her answering smile. “Is it working?” she asked. 

“It’s not _not_ working,” was all Gabrielle was willing to admit. “ _Now_ , anyway. But come on, Xena.” 

Xena was instantly all innocence again. “What?” 

“You enjoyed every second of that, admit it.” 

Xena made a noise of dismissal. “Of course I did. ‘ _What makes a good lover is being gentle and kind?’_ Please. Like a week before that you hadn't spent the whole night - "

Gabrielle took her own turn cutting Xena off with a kiss, and further took the opportunity to roll them so that she was looking down at a very self-satisfied Xena afterwards. 

“Besides,” Xena continued, “I figured out a long time ago you could be goaded into doing your best.” 

“What, at sex?” Gabrielle said, feeling very seen and also like she should maybe be more offended than she was. 

Xena laughed. “Among other things,” she admitted. “But yeah, selfishly - sex has always been up there.” 

And as true as it was that Gabrielle knew her way around Xena’s body, Xena knew exactly how to play her like a lyre. Gabrielle almost laughed at that - because that was why they were here, after all. The smirk was just starting to pull at Xena’s lips again as she watched Gabrielle come to just that realization, and she struggled mightily once again not to roll her eyes. 

“You know,” Gabrielle said, because two could - and two definitely _would_ \- play this game. “That’s such an awfully _nice_ thing to say.” 

Xena’s eyes narrowed. Gabrielle smiled innocently. 

“Careful, Gabrielle,” she said, edging near taunting. “I can do ‘ _nice’,_ too.”

Gabrielle only smirked, wholly unthreatened. 

“Oh yeah?” she challenged, and took Xena’s bottom lip between her teeth to run her tongue over it. With a final, less gentle bite, she released it. “Let’s see how that works out for you.” 

“Is that a threat?” Xena asked, but her eyes were dark, and Gabrielle could read the way Xena’s arms were itching to topple her. 

“You wanna find out?” Gabrielle invited.

The feral nature of Xena’s expression told Gabrielle everything she needed to know, and she shivered, ready for Xena to be as ‘ _nice’_ as she wanted. Xena might have iron willpower, but Gabrielle had the confidence born of experience that if she really applied herself, it wouldn’t last long.

“Oh yeah,” Xena replied, growling it low in her throat before her lips caught Gabrielle’s. 


End file.
